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Peter Norback, the "One Can a Week" food donation program coordinator, right, talks to customer Patrick Boyle in the Sunflower Market at East Speedway and North Swan Road. Norback collects food for the Tucson Community Food Bank.

Neighbors: 'One Can a Week' program is catching on

Grocers now part of drive to help Tucson food bank

Peter Norback, the "One Can a Week" food donation program coordinator, right, talks to customer Patrick Boyle in the Sunflower Market at East Speedway and North Swan Road. Norback collects food for the Tucson Community Food Bank.

Every Sunday morning for the past two years, residents of the
central Tucson Miles Neighborhood have been placing food donations
on their front porches.

And every Sunday at midday, those nonperishables have been
collected by 68-year-old neighborhood resident Peter Norback, who
drives his 1987 black Volkswagen Cabriolet with the top down. He
puts a burgundy patio umbrella in the back seat, "to make it look
like an ice cream truck."

The result: more than 20,000 pounds of food have been donated to
the local Community Food Bank, which has experienced a sharp rise
in demand for food over the same period.

About half of the approximately 200 households in Miles are now
taking part in the program.

The Miles Neighborhood is bordered by Broadway to the north,
Kino Parkway to the east and the Arroyo Chico Wash to the south and
west.

Norback's idea has caught on in other parts of the country.
Community Food Bank President and Chief Executive Officer Bill
Carnegie says he's had numerous calls about the "One Can A Week"
program from other food banks that want to use it as a model, and
some are already doing it.

The Huffington Post ran an item about Norback last year,
too.

And Norback, who has been living in Miles for seven years, also
recently led an expansion of "One Can A Week" to two local grocery
stores - Rincon Market near the University of Arizona and the
Sunflower Market at East Speedway and North Swan Road.

Norback said he was inspired by President Obama's message of
hope when he began the program with 10 homes in January 2009.

"The food bank was all over the news all the time," said
Norback, who is a local computer instructor. "We're the richest
country in the world. I figured if everyone gave one can per week,
we could make our country a better one. I thought I'd start with my
neighborhood."

While many have since soured on Obama's message, Norback has
not.

"They are just being silly. They've never done a project," said
Norback, who blogs about the program's progress. "If we all start
working together we can make something happen."

Norback spends three hours making the weekly Sunday collections
of cans of food and peanut butter, pasta and spaghetti sauce from
neighbors' homes.

Every Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon, Norback sits at Rincon
Market collecting nonperishable food and cash donations for the
Community Food Bank. The Rincon Market program began a year
ago.

He spends another three hours weekly at the Sunflower Market
collection, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Wednesdays. Norback began
collecting there a month ago.

His deal with the store managers is that at the end of each
shift he uses any cash collected at the grocery store to buy food
for the food bank.

"I figured out that we've provided three meals each to more than
5,000 people," Norback said. "That's a small rock concert."

While Norback mans the collections at Rincon Market and
Sunflower Market on his own, he now has two neighborhood volunteers
helping him with the Sunday collections.

The Community Food Bank is giving out 30,000 primary food boxes
per month - double the amount it was giving out in 2008. The food
bank also gives out supplemental food boxes and provides food to
200 Southern Arizonan nonprofits. In November it provided meals to
227,000 Southern Arizonans, 40 percent of them children and 12
percent of them seniors.

"We see new faces every day - people from every walk of life,"
Carnegie said. "In the food bank's 35 years, this is the worst it's
been."

Carnegie said he was initially doubtful when Norback approached
him with the one-can-a-week concept.

"To be perfectly honest, I thought he was a little crazy. I said
to him, 'OK, you go try it,' " Carnegie said. "But he's been so
successful. It's so simple when you know you can take a can out of
your cupboard and whatever you are selecting is probably going to
be served the next day or week, perhaps on a neighbor's table. You
may not even know they are in need. …

"I have been surprised it took off and was accepted so much. A
lot of it is due to Peter - he's been willing to drive around the
neighborhood and bring everything to us each Monday. Wouldn't it be
a wonderful New Year's resolution if more people in our community
stepped up and made similar commitments? If every one of us gave
one can a week, that would be a significant resource in the fight
against hunger in this community."